AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002Session 120. Protecting Local Dark-Sky Areas and Sky Brightness as a Part of Education in Astronomy
Special Session Oral, Wednesday, January 9, 2002, 2:00-3:30pm, Georgetown East

[120.06] What Astronomers and the AAS Need to be Doing to Curb Light Pollution

D. W. E. Green (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

Astronomers and especially the AAS are doing apalling little
in the war on light pollution. This is quite surprising,
considering that optical groundbased astronomy may become
nearly extinct in the 21st century if we don't get more
serious about the loss of our night skies to artificial
lighting. Part of the blame must be placed on astronomers
throughout the 20th century (particularly before 1980), as
very few of them seem to have set an example by starting an
early crusade against bad outdoor night lighting (save for a
handful of important individuals near large U.S.
observatories, and a few connected with smaller
observatories); this apathy of earlier generations of
astronomers fueled the current general apathy within the AAS
and aided the opening of the floodgates in terms of the
disastrous lighting situation now upon us in terms of
drowning out the night sky. There are possible solutions,
and they need to be discussed and acted upon quickly. For
example, the AAS should require that all members include a
useful amount (say, $30) in annual membership fees to be
directly transmitted to the International Dark Sky
Association, and the AAS should make constant visible
strides to educate the public and government officials of
the absolute need to reduce outdoor lighting levels and to
fully shield all outdoor lighting. There are many other
areas of research into outdoor lighting that the AAS should
fund or officially/strongly support, so that the
astronomical community can better be educated (and can
better educate the public) on the evils of bad and
thoughtless outdoor-lighting practices; such research
includes developing a comprehensive database of national
statistics on numbers and types of different outdoor lamps,
as a function of time (thus, historical), and also a
comprehensive database including all local, state, and
federal lighting laws and ordinances together with legal
court cases (and their outcomes) involving outdoor night
lighting. And professional astronomers realistically have an
obligation to their colleagues to discuss the problems of
(and solutions to) light pollution at any and all talks
concerning astronomy or astrophysics to the general public.
All general astronomy textbooks and school/college courses
should have considerable (not merely token) space and time
devoted to the problem of bad outdoor-lighting practices.